The Economy & Individual Responsibility

For the last year or more I have been reading about various companies, organizations, government representatives, and people who have helped deceive, cheat, and otherwise gone to great lengths to create the troubles we are experiencing today at the expense of everyone else.

People have fleeced hard working individuals out of their retirement savings through Ponzi schemes, created mortgages resulting in foreclosures all over the country, and companies are sending more and more work ( and jobs) overseas where it is less expensive to hire labor. In a word, we are seeing greed at its very best. And I am tired of it.

These are tough times and there is no doubt about that. But if you step back and look at how we got into this mess, we will see that everything was caused by our current society's acceptance, and sometimes encouragement, of being greedy. There is a certain percentage of our society that has been allowed to let their greed create the very problems we face today.

The mortgage industry created a system where people can make loans to people who cannot afford them and then sell them to someone else for a fee. While it used to be that the home mortgage was a partnership between bank and homeowner that is no longer the case. In the past, a bank would make sure a homeowner could afford the loan because they wanted to see the loan paid back. They have a direct interest in making responsible loans. Today, person A makes a loan, collects his fee, and then sells it to person b and walks away. This results in bad loans being made just to generate the upfront fee and then someone else is left trying to collect!

Now we are spending money bailing people out who made mistakes. While I am all for helping out others, I think there is a fundamental flaw in the way things are working out here. We need to separate the people who are in a bad way because of misfortune from the people who are in a bad way because they feel entitled or were greedy.

I want to see that people who lose their jobs or encounter unexpected health issues get help and assistance so they do not lose their homes. But I really feel that someone who took out a loan representing 70% of their take home pay as a payment because they felt entitled to a bigger house should not be looked at in the same way. The same goes for people who invest in funds that offer results that are too good to be true.

Recently a huge Ponzi scheme was uncovered and people invested because of claims of 20%-30% every year on their money. Now, if the rest of the world is in bad shape or offering interest rates that are 4-5 times less, shouldn't that be a red flag that something is wrong? If everyone else is offering 4% and someone comes along saying they can get you 20%, shouldn't you ask yourself why????

No, we don't ask ourselves why because greed kicks in. For those who have money to risk, then fine, they can go ahead. But they should not come back to government asking for taxpayer money when they lose everything. The same goes for major corporations who feel entitled to keep up "business as usual" while the economy is going down the sewer.

We hear of CEO's making 10's or 100's of million dollars a year. That is just absurd. The only person who deserves that kind of money is the person who discovers a cure for cancer, diabetes, or any major disease. Also, the person who invents a way to make us energy independent also would justify that. But people who run companies into the ground? No way!

What really gets me angry is the feeling of entitlement that a certain part of our country feels right now. It doesn't make any difference whether they can afford something or not. They should have it and when they can't pay for it, we should foot the bill. That just isn't right. But yet in continues.

Credit card companies can charge 27% interest on their credit cards when the interest rate hovers in the low single digits. That is not right either. But yet it continues.

The part that really leaves me frustrated is that the rest of us just seem to accept things as they are. We don't feel like we have the power to change things. The fact is, however, that we each hold an awesome amount of power. We just don't use it.

Imagine what would happen if we did some research and refused to invest in companies who farmed most of their work overseas?

Imagine if we pulled out our money from companies whose CEO's abuse the shareholders with obscene salaries and personal expenses.

Imagine if we actually voted out our government representatives when they fail to act in our best interests?

As "regular people" we have the power to do that and much more. We can purchase goods and services from companies who do the right thing by us. We can take the time to do some research before placing our ballot for someone at election time. Most of all, we must take steps to assure that the majority of people are held accountable for their actions.

I want to see people who really need help to continue to get it. In fact, I would love to see people get more help than they currently get. But I want to see that help going to the people who did the right thing and have limited recourse in life. We can continue to provide that help while making sure that those who were acting greedy or in their own best interests are turned away.

Now I know that there are many reading this that are saying we cannot let companies go out of business because of all the money everyday people have invested in them. I agree with that but we should not be giving handouts or "bailouts" and allowing these companies to be run by the same people who put them into that position in the first place! That is just obscene.

Let's make an individual effort to hold everyone more accountable for their actions and take the time to make our best decisions moving forward so that this economy turns itself around and does not repeat itself in a few more years.

David V. Greis